Why Talking About Stress Helps - and Why Your Body Still Needs to Be Included
Talking about stress helps.
It can help us name what is happening, understand what is causing it, notice patterns, ask for support and figure out what may need to change.
And stress is also physical.
A stressful conversation, an impossible workload, financial pressure, grief, family conflict or a calendar with no room left in it can affect your thoughts and emotions while also changing your heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, energy, digestion and sleep.
This is why we often include both talk therapy and body-aware approaches in our therapy work at Nurtured Minds Wellness.
Talking helps us make sense of stress
Sometimes the first useful thing we can do with stress is name it clearly.
“I am overwhelmed.”
“I am angry.”
“I am scared about money.”
“I am carrying too much at work.”
“I am exhausted from being the person everyone relies on.”
“I cannot keep doing all of this at the same pace.”
There is research behind the value of putting feelings into words. Studies of affect labeling, or naming an emotional experience, have found changes in brain activity associated with reduced emotional reactivity.
Talking can also help us understand what is creating the stress.
Someone who says, “I need to get better at managing stress,” may actually need help setting a boundary at work. Someone who cannot relax may be carrying most of the parenting and household load. Someone who becomes anxious every Sunday night may be responding to a workplace that has become unsustainable.
Therapy gives us somewhere to look at those pieces.
Because sometimes stress management means learning a coping skill.
Sometimes it means changing what keeps causing the stress.
Stress also creates a physical response
This is the piece we can miss when we try to think our way through everything.
Harvard Health describes the stress response as a rapid chain of changes involving the brain, nervous system and hormones.
When the brain perceives danger, the amygdala signals the hypothalamus. The sympathetic nervous system then activates the fight-or-flight response. Adrenaline is released, the heart beats faster, breathing becomes quicker, blood pressure rises and more energy becomes available to respond to the threat. If the brain continues to perceive danger, cortisol helps keep the body on alert.
Harvard uses a helpful analogy: the sympathetic nervous system is the gas pedal, while the parasympathetic nervous system acts like the brake, helping the body settle when the threat has passed.
The important part is that the stressor does not have to be an emergency.
Traffic, work pressure, family problems and ongoing worry can also activate the stress response.
That can look like:
tight shoulders or jaw
shallow or faster breathing
a pounding heart
restlessness
irritability
difficulty concentrating
feeling constantly alert
trouble settling after the stressful thing is over
This is one reason someone can understand exactly why they are stressed and still feel it physically.
This is where the body needs to be included
Including the body does not mean replacing talk therapy.
It means recognizing that if stress has changed breathing, muscle tension, heart rate and activation, we may want resources that work with those responses too.
Harvard identifies several approaches that can help counter the stress response, including physical activity, breathing practices, yoga, tai chi and social support. Movement can deepen breathing and relieve muscle tension, while practices that elicit a relaxation response can help the body move out of sustained activation.
In therapy, body-aware work might be as simple as noticing:
“What happened in your chest when you said that?”
“Did your breathing change?”
“Where are you holding tension?”
“Do you feel like sitting still right now, or does your body want to move?”
We are gathering information, not looking for another thing to correct.
Stress resources can give the body somewhere to go
Once we understand what is happening, we can experiment with resources.
For one person, that might be walking while they talk in therapy. For another, it could be stretching, breathing, spending time outside, moving the body or noticing where tension is being held.
Connection matters too. Harvard identifies social support as one factor that can help buffer the effects of chronic stress. Sometimes talking to a therapist, friend or partner is helping the nervous system as well as helping us think.
At Nurtured Minds, another body-based resource we may use is Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises, or TRE. TRE uses a series of exercises to invite a natural muscular tremoring response. When appropriate, it can offer another way of exploring physical tension and activation rather than working only through conversation.
No single resource is right for everyone.
We need the story and the body
Stress happens in context.
There may be relationships to talk about, workloads to change, grief to process, boundaries to set, old patterns to understand or support that needs to be asked for.
Talking helps us work with those pieces.
And because stress also involves the nervous system, hormones, breathing, muscles and the rest of the body, therapy can make room for those pieces too.
At Nurtured Minds Wellness, our therapists blend traditional talk therapy with somatic and body-aware approaches when they fit the person in front of us. We offer counselling in Leduc, Calmar, Nisku and Wizard Lake, nature-based therapy in Leduc County, and virtual therapy across Alberta and Canada.
If you understand your stress and your body still seems to be carrying it, that can be something we explore together.
